365 days of SL, day 97

SL has some funny glitches at times. Last night, when walking along Alikat's, we came across one of the AK Stable Trainers, floating out above the ocean; unusual, perhaps, but not entirely unheard of.

What WAS more than usual was the fact that the place where she was located was well outside the sims that make up Alikat's estate. I was completely puzzled by this; my first thought was that maybe a void sim had been added in that area, but this turned out not to be the case. Sim crossing glitches, lag and ghosting (someone's avatar hanging around after they logged off) were all considered as possible causes but ruled out, partly because it's unclear how they'd produce a lasting effect, partly because she was demonstrably there, logged in and active.

None of us managed to enter the area ourselves, BTW — entirely in line with what would be expected. In the end, I just IMed her and asked, and she said that she was actually standing elsewhere in the sim, so we concluded that it was just a weird glitch.

Speaking of glitches, in the above screenshot, the edge of the grassy area is also the edge of the sim; we're demonstrating a little twist there ourselves, standing outside the sim area proper. I'm not entirely sure about the technical details, but it's worth noting that SL still sees us at a (sim-local) X position of 0 there; presumably, we're thus not out-of-sim yet as far as the engine is concerned. (If we tried to leave the sim, we'd simply be bounced back, since you cannot be out-of-sim[1].)

The rock formations in the background are genuinely out-of-sim, BTW. This works by having them linked with another (root) prim that's still inside the sim — as far as SL is concerned, the entire object IS in the sim; it just so happens that some parts of it are sufficiently displaced to APPEAR outside. Objects like that have become quite popular in the past year or two or so, and they really are nice, as they make the transition from sim to non-sim ocean much less abrupt.